


such an obvious reason (but nonetheless it's ours)

by jupitired



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, i managed to not injure anyone someone admire my restraint, not cursed child-compliant because i don't acknowledge that monstrosity, the pining is both very tortured and completely oblivious and i think that's very sexy of scorpius, which one of these is the real love story? who knows certainly not i the writer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:28:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25366114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jupitired/pseuds/jupitired
Summary: They share a lift maybe once a week though and one time, it was the morning after Rose’s birthday which had involved inadvisable amounts of Firewhiskey as well as unmentionable karaoke choices. James had shot him a look that seemed tired but pleased and a smile that seemed to ask,Last night, huh?It had left Scorpius in such a state of panicked confusion that he’d almost forgotten to exit the lift had James not nudged him. Taking the utmost care to not make eye contact, he’d mumbledsee youand fled to the Time room to stare at the seconds tick by on the melted Dali clock until his brain had slowed down.It was, all in all, not his finest moment. Which is to say that it’s never Scorpius’s finest moment around James.Or — Scorpius gets painfully, intimately familiar with the sensation of being very wrong.
Relationships: Scorpius Malfoy & Rose Weasley, Scorpius Malfoy/James Sirius Potter
Comments: 8
Kudos: 36





	such an obvious reason (but nonetheless it's ours)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [provocative_envy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/provocative_envy/gifts).



> 1\. this fic is for andrea who is a legend and who deserves all the rare pair fics her heart desires so here we are! happy bday!  
> 2\. title is from conversations by far caspian. i came up with this title the fastest that i ever have mostly because i was listening to this song when i planned this fic and it really fit  
> 3\. once again i reveal myself as patently and persistently unable to write about straight people  
> 4\. also if i've calculated it right this takes place in like. the late 2020s so i'm pretending the world hasn't exploded by then hahahaha  
> 5\. would you believe that in my original plan this fic was like 4 to 5k so funny how this happened in like the span of 48 hours  
> 6\. very tiny trigger warning for mentions of being outed  
> \- okay that's all please go forth and enjoy!

How James Sirius Potter became an Unspeakable, Scorpius will never know. It’s been three years and he’s still vaguely baffled by it — even more baffling that he’d been approached by the department instead of applying for it and then wearing a hole into multiple carpets by pacing through the six-month wait for a response like everyone else. Not that Scorpius is bitter or anything, it’s just — remarkable. Had it been any other department, he might have cried (or silently accused, as it was) _nepotism!_ but the tangled, unsolvable chaos of the Unspeakables is such that it can’t support the delicate spider web of nepotism. It’s part of why he wanted to be an Unspeakable: no one can accuse him of throwing his weight around to get in.

Still, Scorpius isn’t sure why it bothers him so much. It isn’t like they work together in any meaningful way — he’s in Love or Magilinguistics or something else in that vein that utilises his “unique and perceptive understanding of human nature and sociology” which is something he’d overheard in the break room back when he had first been inducted. Scorpius is over in Time where he can experiment and play around with one of the world’s most dangerous forces to his heart’s content and it seems that there’s no overlap between their specialties.

They share a lift maybe once a week though and one time, it was the morning after Rose’s birthday which had involved inadvisable amounts of Firewhiskey as well as unmentionable karaoke choices. James had shot him a look that seemed tired but pleased and a smile that seemed to ask, _Last night, huh?_ It had left Scorpius in such a state of panicked confusion that he’d almost forgotten to exit the lift had James not nudged him. Taking the utmost care to not make eye contact, he’d mumbled _see you_ and fled to the Time room to stare at the seconds tick by on the melted Dali clock until his brain had slowed down.

It was, all in all, not his finest moment. Which is to say that it’s never Scorpius’s finest moment around James.

It definitely wasn’t throughout most of his Hogwarts career when Scorpius seemed to hardly exist to him until he was outed in fifth year and the gossip mill started to churn around him. It’s not exactly accurate to say that Scorpius blames him for any of the sharper shreds of untruth floating through Hogwarts but James had been the unofficial king of the gossip mill, the captain deftly steering the ship. It would have been nice (alternately, immensely helpful at a shit time of Scorpius’s life) if James had concisely told a few people to shut up if only as a favour to his cousin’s friend. In the end, though, Scorpius doesn’t blame him but sometimes, he catches a glimpse of James laughing amongst a crowd of people from afar and he’s thrown back with such a white-hot rod of emotion blazing through him that there’s must be some blame burrowed deep into him where he can’t dig it out and well, that’s not something he’s currently willing to deal with.

Scorpius doesn’t quite know how he feels about James Sirius Potter but so far, it resembles nothing good.

* * *

It starts, as most disasters in his life these days do, with Rose’s birthday party. When they were back in Hogwarts, Scorpius couldn’t have possibly known what strange and unpredictable forces are summoned by the occasion of Rose’s birth. He might petition to open up a sub-department to investigate it. But he’s not really expecting at that moment to be hit with those forces — her birthday is still a month away and the chaos usually only lasts a week at most. So when she invites him for lunch at one of their favourite haunts, an airy, plant-infested Muggle café with amazing sandwiches, he thinks very little of it. It reminds him a little of the greenhouses at Hogwarts except none of the plants here have any desire to kill him.

He spots Rose’s strawberry curls as soon as he walks in and gives a small wave to her before he realises that someone else is sitting at the table with her — someone with a very distinctive head of hair, riotous and messy and feathery and incredibly, inexplicably soft-looking. When James turns to face him, Scorpius’s heart shrivels in his chest and drops to his feet, mostly because he realises that Rose is planning something terrible, and he’s sure it shows on his face. James isn’t much better — his face has gone a little ashy with his lips pressed together, his face tight with a thin veneer of tension.

“Scorp,” Rose says in such a deliberately buoyant tone that he represses the urge to snort for now, “so glad you could make it.”

“Couldn’t possibly miss out on this company,” Scorpius replies pointedly. James, who has regained his colour, flashes him an impishly crooked smile which Scorpius catches from the periphery of his vision. “Have you ordered yet?”

“Yeah, I ordered for you.” He knows she probably ordered his favourite since it seems like she’s going to ask for a favour, one that involves James somehow. Rose pauses a heavy, expectant pause and that’s when he knows for sure — this is going to be a big favour. Back when they first decided to room together after graduation, Rose had pitched it to him with a smuggled bottle of Firewhiskey, an infographic poster, and a woefully sentimental collage documenting their friendship which now sits above their fireplace in an antique frame Scorpius’s mother picked out. “Think of it like a lavender marriage but without the secrecy or the repression,” she’d said. When he’d heard that sentence, he should’ve run far away; instead, he’d thought it almost… romantic. Now, look at him, cowering in a Muggle café at whatever favour Rose is going to ask of him.

“So I kind of need you two to plan my birthday party this year,” Rose finally says in a squeak more high-pitched than Scorpius has ever heard which tells him that she hates the idea of it as much as he does. It makes sense — Rose is governed by a neurotic need for control that Scorpius both shares and admires.

Still. “ _What_ ,” James and Scorpius exclaim simultaneously.

“Wait, wait, wait,” James says in rush. “Isn’t your birthday party like your baby? Why aren’t you planning it?”

“I — Well —“ Rose wrings the Monsterra leaf-print paper napkin between her hands. “I have this exposé and we’re _so close_ to a breakthrough and then deadlines and I’ll probably be working overtime for like two months and if that is the case then I need someone else to be doing the party so it doesn’t fall apart.” She looks at them with big, guileless brown eyes, and really, there was never a question of it for Scorpius.

Scorpius knows how much she loves her birthday parties, how much it means to her to have everyone she loves in a room together to celebrate her as much as she celebrates them for one night because nearly every other day she’s churning along at a hundred and ten percent. She’d said as much to him on her eighteenth, in the wee hours of the morning, after she’d run herself ragged all day making sure everything in their flat was set up. They’d toasted it alone at midnight with cupcakes Scorpius had planned to leave until morning with the half-full bottle of champagne left over from the week before when they’d celebrated Scorpius getting into the Unspeakables’ training. It was all so long ago and yet still so fresh.

“Damn, Rose, you know I’d never say no,” James says, reaching out to fluff Rose’s hair like she was still thirteen. “I just wanted to make sure everything was okay.”

“Yes, yeah, of course,” Scorpius answers clumsily once he snaps out of his nostalgic stupor.

“Great, good,” Rose breathes out, clearly relieved, beaming at them. “So I have the guest list and a few other bits ready — which I’ll owl you, James — and a list of things that still need to be done but I’m sure you can handle it, no problem.”

James steeples his fingers together and leans towards Rose, looking shrewd. “Can I be a little… creative?”

Rose and James then have what reads to Scorpius as a conversation conveyed entirely through facial expressions. He can translate some of what Rose is, well, _saying_ , but most of it is incomprehensible to him. After a minute, Rose, still appearing quite unsure, says, “Fine but… within limits.”

“Aye, aye, captain,” James salutes, winking with comic indiscretion at Scorpius, then turns to him. “Well, looks like we’re finally properly working together.”

Scorpius takes a deep, fortifying breath and looks James head-on for the first time during the entirety of this encounter. It’s strange how different a person’s face looks when you at it straight on, how much more real and solid and suddenly unlike anyone else’s. “Looks like we are.” Scorpius notes, offhandedly and with the intention of forethought, that Rose looks entirely too pleased by this unfolding of events.

* * *

Scorpius catches Rose having a midnight bowl of cereal that night with all her limbs gathered underneath her father’s old bright orange Cannons blanket. The TV replaying vintage-looking cartoons is the only source of light in the living room and Scorpius decides that it will do for now since he can’t seem to get to sleep — three guesses as to why. He flops down and watches the little blue mushroom-dwelling creatures run around like headless chickens. _Smorts?_ he tries to recall. _Sworfs?_

“I can’t believe you’re making me _plan your birthday_ with _James_ ,” Scorpius whines. “Also, what are these things called?”

“Smurfs,” she mumbles into her cereals then sits straighter, tucking her hair behind her ears when she faces him. “I don’t understand what your thing is with him anyhow. I asked him once about it and he had no clue what I was talking about.”

“You what?” he bleats, a touch too loud for midnight in their slightly too-small living room. Sheepishly, he clears his throat and waves his hands in a gesture of dismissal. “There isn’t _a thing_ , per se. I just don’t… I don’t know? Like him all that much? I don’t think he and I get along, is all.”

“ _Right_.” Rose inspects him with obvious suspicion then abruptly switches to a blandly prim demeanour. “Well, if I can get along with the Lifestyle department, you can get along with James.”

“That’s only because you want to sleep with their editor, though,” Scorpius parries with a shit-eating grin, in a painfully transparent to avoid further discussion of the topic.

“That’s rude and irrelevant,” Rose says delicately. “Also, what I may or may not want to do with Wisteria Parkinson-Brown is not any of your business.”

“ _Right_ ,” he echoes her, not objecting when she punches his shoulder then sets her head on it with a yawn.

The point is: Scorpius is a good friend. He has qualms but he will do it even if James chooses to meet in the Ministry’s cafeteria because he likes their “soup.” Or rather, what Scorpius would very loosely term as soup. He understands that Rose picked James for his very specific skill-set (that is, throwing raging parties of which Scorpius had only attended one before James graduated and through no fault of James’s ended up being the site of his first kiss and subsequent outing) but really, what kind of skills can someone who enjoys the Ministry’s questionable slop offer?

“Okay,” James says by way of greeting, precariously setting down a wad of papers and a bowl of orange gloop on the table Scorpius managed to claim. Scorpius suspects either carrot or lentil but isn’t willing to investigate too closely. “Sorry, hi, got a little caught up in this experiment.”

“It’s fine, I get it.”

“Yeah, you do, right.” James grins almost conspiratorially at him and Scorpius realises with a jolt that James must love whatever he does down in the department just as much as Scorpius loves being in the Time room. It’s an unexpected kind of kinship.

“What is it that your department does anyway?”

“Ah, well, I can’t tell you that,” James says with an air of exaggerated mystery. “We’re called Unspeakables for a reason.”

“You know that’s only for people outside the department, right?” Scorpius asks half-jokingly. When James remains silent, Scorpius feels his eyes widening in increasing horror. “Please tell me you know the Unspeakables’ policy.”

A few seconds later, James gasps out in laughter, shoulders shaking. “Of course I do — _sure_ , I might not have the policy book memorised but still. What do you take me for? _Your face_ , though.”

“Hilarious,” Scorpius says, openly unimpressed.

James shrugs innocently. “Anyway — Magilinguistics, uh, we investigate which patterns of language or like, linguistic phenomena invoke magic and the process of language becoming a vessel for magic.”

“Hmm. That sounds… complicated but isn’t that kind of like the spell creation department?”

“Not really,” James says, his face scrunched up in thought. “Spell creation is just kind of — well, occasionally it’s just stumbling upon the right words _and_ movements and obviously, sometimes it’s much more methodical but Magilinguistics looks at why specific words work for magic and the history and emotion behind them, if that makes sense.”

“It does,” Scorpius confirms. “I don’t think anyone in Hogwarts would have expected you to be doing this.”

“Part of why I did it,” James says with that same familiar crooked grin that Scorpius is beginning to realise signifies his embarrassment which seems a little unfair. When Scorpius gets embarrassed, he goes bright red from head to toe; meanwhile, James gets a charming, roguish grin.

“In what way?” Scorpius asks, feeling his gaze still a little fixed on James’s mouth.

James seems to squirm a little under Scorpius’s scrutiny but before Scorpius can take back his question, James says, “Like you said, nobody expected me to do it. It was supposed to be either Quidditch or going to work with Uncle George and Ron which were good options, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t know — put it like this: with these two, there was a gap left me for that would fit around me if I wanted but with being an Unspeakable, I had to dig a space for myself and even then, it might not have fit me. I had to apply and train and intern like everyone else and even then, I might not have got it and that… felt more right than anything else.”

Scorpius feels rooted to the ground looking at James like Narcissus had been bound to staring at his reflection. When he moves to speak, his throat is dry as anything. All of it amounts to an incredibly strange and uncomfortable sensation in the pit of his stomach. “Yeah — yeah, I get exactly what you mean.”

The expression on James’s face turns grateful and soft, his smile no bigger than the anxious one from before but it seems to radiate warmth in a way that settles over Scorpius like the heat of a fire. He tries to return as best as he could but he doubts his face could express what he felt as well as James seemed to.

After a stretch of moments that melds together, James looks away, his hand going to the back of his neck. “Okay, that was a bit heavy,” James says under his breath. “Anyway, uh, the party.”

“Right,” Scorpius says, snapping back into place like an elastic. He can sense his face going a flaring, ruddy, uncontrollable red. “The party.”

Scorpius busies himself with flipping through the file that Rose had handed him that morning with a vaguely mutinous expression. Most of the papers were part of the guest list and guest information with only a few pages dedicated to various people and companies she recommends and then a list of things to take care of.

“So… quite a few things to get done,” James says, heavy with dread.

“I can get my parents to do the invitations,” Scorpius offers. “They’ll be delighted since their next gala isn’t until Christmas.”

James snorts. “Glad _someone_ is having fun,” he says.

“I’ll handle anything to do with food and drink and I’m guessing it’s up to you to plan the theme and activities,” Scorpius says as he scans the list making sure everything is accounted for.

“What?” James asks, looking utterly crestfallen though at what, Scorpius has no idea. “I won’t get to go cake-tasting?”

A giggle, entirely too high to be dignified, bursts out of Scorpius. “Oh, you poor thing,” Scorpius sighs breathlessly. “You can come along, I guess.”

James brightens like he’s won the lottery then his grin shrinks into a smirk, mischievous and unsettling. “So about the theme…”

Scorpius’s lips purse involuntarily and he feels wary for the first time since the appearance of the orange gloop. “If you suggest anything involving — I don’t know — strip clubs or — or,” he fumbles for something equally inappropriate but finds his knowledge disappointingly lacking.

“Are you crazy? My _parents_ will be there,” James points out disbelievingly. “ _Your_ parents will be there. I’m starting to get the feeling that you’ve got the wrong idea about me.”

“Maybe,” Scorpius allows with a tilt of his head, examining James more carefully to see if he can find what he’s missed before, “but whatever ideas I have weren’t entirely without evidence.”

“Maybe,” James echoes, evenly meeting his gaze, “but that doesn’t mean your conclusions were always right.”

Scorpius loses his nerve and looks back down at the list. Eye contact has never been a strong suit of his but there was an endlessness about James’s eyes that dislodged something in the cavity of his chest, something about the depth of them that reminds him a little of Rose as well. They both have that kind of welcoming flood of capaciousness, a sharp glimmer of contemplative intelligence, but slightly different shades of brown.

“So what was your idea about the theme?” Scorpius asks on an exhale.

James looks faintly puzzled for a moment before seemingly tuning back into the conversation. “Alright, how about: the beach.” This elaborate pitch is accompanied by jazz hands and a look that borders on a leer.

Scorpius raises a single pale unimpressed brow, a skill that he is inordinately proud of. “Is that really you using all your famed charm and persuasive skill?”

“Come on,” James whines, letting his face come awfully close to the surface of the table which Scorpius has thoroughly Scourgified but still doesn’t quite trust. “It’s the beach in the middle of August! It’ll be wonderful! Rose loves the beach! My entire family loves the beach! All sane people love the beach! People can do so many things — Quidditch, Muggle sports, sailing, eating, sunbathing, swimming, a million things! We can use a Stasis Charm on the food so it’ll keep just fine and make it a whole day thing. And are there certain people on the guest list that I wouldn’t mind seeing in a state of semi-nudity? _Maybe_.” The last part he says while looking at an indistinct spot behind Scorpius’s shoulder, his brown skin blooming slightly pink for once to Scorpius’s vindictive sense of satisfaction even as he tamps down a flare of acidic feeling that burns through him.

“There you go,” Scorpius coos, delicately toeing around the last part and injecting as much condescension into his voice as he can which, thanks to his lineage, is quite a lot. His father was careful to keep Scorpius’s childhood free from the many influences that hung over his own childhood but he did eventually teach him the essentials for any relatively spoilt heir to a massive fortune, including condescension.

“Fuck you,” James shoots back petulantly but he seems to get that Scorpius is _mostly_ joking.

“No, thanks,” Scorpius says, coolly. “I like the idea, though, and it’s easy to make everything cohesive with a theme like that. Do you know any beaches we could rent out?”

“You really like the idea?” James asks, uncharacteristically hesitant. “I just really want Rose to have a good birthday.”

“She’ll love it.”

James releases a breath, shoulders going lax. It’s amazing that his body could be that rigid while slumped over the table. “Thanks,” he says. “So, I’ve got a few places in mind.”

Scorpius holds up a hand to halt him as he digs out a pen. “Wait, let me get this down.”

* * *

The next four weekends are spent traipsing around both Muggle and magical Britain in search of the various things needed to host the perfect birthday party. To be truthful, it’s tiring work and in the immediate sense, mostly thankless, though James who has significantly less experience with parties that don’t simply involve smuggling alcohol and spelling decorations seems to be depleted of energy much faster than Scorpius whose manic perfectionism fuels him through having to, closely and with troubling thoroughness, inspect everything.

On the first weekend when they’re touring the beach houses James had found, he bears the tour of the first house down in Cornwall well enough. When Scorpius insists on going to check the desolate stretch of beach in front of it at the high point of the morning, he simply shrugs his jacket off and whistles a jovial, jingling tune as Scorpius makes sure that the waters aren’t too dangerous for the children who will be attending. When Scorpius is checking the cleanliness of the toilets, which are on the whole, abysmal, James offers to check the showers then easily stands aside when Scorpius decides that he can’t go without taking a look himself. He looks on with an amused, indulgent smile curving his lips and when the shower spatters Scorpius with water from head to toe while he’s testing the water pressure, he takes a picture and laughs so hard, he’s doubled over for five minutes straight even after Scorpius casts a Drying Spell on himself.

(James owls him the picture a few days later. As expected, Scorpius looks like a terrifically albino drowned dog but his eyes are bright and crinkled up at the sides, and at the end of the photo’s magical loop, Scorpius’s past self smiles like he’s in on an inside joke, so intimate that he thinks the photo developing magic must have gone a little wrong.)

The second house is at the opposite end of the country, in Norwich, and the sight of it forces a breath to whoosh out of his lungs. It’s obviously well-kept, the sand mostly cleared of rocks and the house’s white façade is washed soft and unthreatening by the sun. He can see Quidditch goal hoops peeking out from behind the house and there’s a wide alcove out front that could be used for the food and the bar. Scorpius can feel the awed expression on his face because it’s perfect; James looks, perhaps deservedly, smug though there’s a tired slump to his shoulders.

“Shut up,” Scorpius blurts helplessly, much to James’s audible amusement.

The inside is just as perfect-seeming, spacious and woodsy and clean, but Scorpius still embarks on his inspection. James follows him around at first, wonderfully accommodating, but disappears somewhere around the fifteen-minute mark. Scorpius stumbles upon him in one of the bedrooms, laying face down on the gloriously plush bedding (Scorpius had tested it and been loath to part with it), choking back a chuckle when James startles at the sound of his footsteps.

“Sorry,” he says blearily, rubbing at his face. “Do you need me for anything?”

“No, no, you’re fine,” Scorpius reassures him, leaning against the door frame. “ _I’m_ sorry — I know I can be really frustrating with this kind of thing.”

“Don’t be. I like that you’re… I don’t know… that you’re this meticulous I guess. I’ve never seen anyone who cares this much. It’s refreshing,” James explains. “But — and I’m saying this in the nicest way possible — if I have to watch you check another doorknob, I might commit homicide.”

As he says this, there’s that thoughtful frown of his though it seems a little more edgy and especially out of place amongst his sleep-soft eyes that make his eyelashes look sinfully long and dark and his heat-flushed cheeks. Scorpius feels the inexplicable urge to push his thumb against it and smooth it out, and takes a breath to steady himself. “Thanks,” he replies, carefully light. “I’ll leave you to your afternoon nap and fetch you when I’m done.”

James shoots him a dopey smile and a thumbs-up before burrowing back into the hotel-white bedding. Scorpius is glad James’s eyes are closed to he can’t see the fond smile that pastes itself on his face then turns to go through the other rooms.

By the time they get to the third house, the sun has just barely begun to dip behind the horizon. It would paint a pretty picture had the house been… a house. Shanty might be a more accurate. Shack, perhaps. Scorpius narrows his eyes at it, trying to detect any magic on it that might concealing something a little more useable but to no avail.

James must mistake it for anger though because he says, “Sorry?” with a slightly crack in his voice at the end but that might just be him recovering from his nap.

“What? No, no need to apologize,” Scorpius says, waving his apology away. “It spares you the tour because I think a second lie-down might be hard to manage and it makes the decision easier.”

James nods with comprehension. “I’ll book it tomorrow.” He pauses, appearing to weigh his next words out. “Is it weird if I say I don’t want to go home yet?”

Scorpius considers his question seriously for a moment. It’s not something he would’ve noticed himself but he doesn’t feel the need to go home and recharge by reading in his bed with some takeout like he usually does after a day and, much to his surprise, the idea of spending a little more time with James doesn’t sound unappealing. “What do you want to do?”

“I think there was a chippy on the way from the apparition point,” James suggests, pointing in what must be the direction of the chippy. “We could get some food and eat it on the beach?”

“Sure,” he agrees readily. It would be nice to catch the sunset on the beach — London sunsets are nothing to scoff at but the gentle rush of the waves, the lack of smog, the hazy line of the horizon visible in the distance, would beat it out any day.

The evening reminds him of the two weeks after graduation when his parents had taken him and Rose down to the family property in the South of France and how they’d spent nights with their legs dangling from the pier, leaning against each other, splashing each other with water, and talking for hours at a time, so long it was a miracle their throats hadn’t withered away. It had been, for both of them, a moment that was necessary to simply be without pretensions and settle into the decisions they’d made about their lives. This evening, though much quieter with only a few spoken observations peppered through it, is marked by a sense of bone-deep comfort that recalls those two weeks and it terrifies him how effortlessly and quickly the feeling has come along.

“You have good ideas sometimes,” Scorpius tells him when they’re parting ways, tone cloudy with fatigue.

James grins and says good-naturedly, “That’s almost a compliment, you know. The first one you’ve ever given me.”

“You wish,” Scorpius scoffs, then adds, “See you next week,” before he Disapparates.

The next weekend when James tags along for the cake-tasting (after Scorpius has copiously assured him that he can handle all the other food and drink himself just fine), they fall into a rhythm of things quite easily though Scorpius has to admonish James many times, often in a hissed tone, about the downright obscene way he tastes the cakes.

First off, there’s the way he eats the cake, always making sure to lick the fork clean which is unnecessarily thorough and this is coming from Scorpius. And his _face,_ you’d think he was experiencing nirvana when you look at him. The cakes are good, they are, but not that good. The worst part, though, is definitely the sounds: there’s a whole litany of appreciative hums and surprised whimpers and delighted groans that he isn’t even remotely trying to suppress.

Scorpius feels infinitely embarrassed for him and he spends much of that Saturday going bright red like a traffic light, feeling like he’s burning up from the inside out, and apologising profusely to all the bakery staff who incidentally, hardly blink at James’s shamelessness which James says indicates that it’s completely normal but Scorpius doubts is right. Still, even it was normal, he maintains that it’s the principle of the thing.

When they finish making the rounds to the bakeries, Scorpius insists on going to a café and getting himself a black coffee and something savoury to wash the persistently cloying, overwhelming sweetness from his tongue. They find a little hole-in-the-wall spot on the same street as the last bakery and he gives himself and James a form so they can rate all the cakes they tasted while they eat.

Scorpius is halfway through his form when James abruptly says, “We make a good team, don’t we? It’s a shame the Unspeakable sub-departments don’t mix more often.”

He hums his agreement over a mouthful of salad. Even though they’ve spent the past two weeks owling constantly and the larger part of the past two weekends together, they barely see each other outside of these excursions. They do, however, chat in the break room now if by some stroke of luck they’re both there at the same time which has only happened twice but one of them doesn’t really count because five minutes later they’d heard a crash from the Time room and Scorpius had to rush back. It was fine in the end but it took half an hour to sort out by which time James was gone. Scorpius painstakingly avoids thinking about the tight sensation of displeasure in his chest when he’d found the break room James-free.

“We should change that,” James says with a dangerous kind of clarity prompting Scorpius to mumble _what?_ which James ignores. “What would an Unspeakable party even look like?”

“What? No,” Scorpius chokes out more audibly now. “I cannot say this emphatically enough: _no_. It would be an unequivocal disaster — we all have awful social skills, I still have no idea how you ended up with us.”

“That’s almost a compliment, you know,” James repeats his words from the previous weekend with a small, inwardly pleased smile.

“You wish,” Scorpio parrots back with a smile to match his.

* * *

He’s lying down on their couch updating Rose on their progress. She’s at their modest dining table surrounded by a mini-tornado of papers trying to start structuring the pieces of the exposé she’s been working and occasionally making a sound to indicate that she’s still listening. He’s just finished telling her about their plans to fetch Muggle decorations for James and their uncle George to charm in a few hours when he hears her chair scrape back and her socked feet pad their way to him.

She stands over him with her eyes surreally clear and blown a little too wide open — she gets like this sometimes when she’s nearing the finish line with a project and it always worries him a little but he trust her to know her limits. Still, every other part of her is softer still, almost as if to make up for the uncanny sharpness of her face, from the escaped ginger strands of her hair haloing around her head to her thin jumper stretched with time and frayed joggers to her fuzzy cat-printed socks which he’d gotten her the Christmas before their NEWTS.

“You and James have been getting along then, it seems,” she notes with a hint of self-satisfaction colouring her tone.

“You could say that,” he concedes which is about as close to an admission that he was wrong as she’ll and she knows it because she doesn’t push. “He’s been… surprisingly pleasant.”

“Hmm, so does that mean you’re ready to admit that you fancy him?”

Scorpius sits up so quickly he gives himself vertigo. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“Come on, it’s okay to admit it,” she cajoles him. “It’s clear you’ve fancied him since we were in Hogwarts. I know it’s a little… complicated because of when you were outed but those feelings have been there a long time and honestly, I don’t think they’re going to go away.”

“Is this why you got us to plan your party together?” he asks, narrowing his eyes at her. “Were you even busy?”

“ _Clearly_ ,” she says and points at the aforementioned storm of paper which — fair enough, Scorpius supposes, it was a little stupid. “Alright, yes, I partly got you two to work on it because of this but also,” she hurries to add, “because I knew you’d work well together! And look, you do!”

“That isn’t proof of anything.”

“Because you won’t give it a chance,” she says with a disbelieving laugh.

“Okay, okay,” he replies, putting his hands up in a gesture of surrender, “say that you’re right and I have this huge — repressed crush on James, what’s to say that he likes me back?”

Rose deflates a little at this, going quiet. “He hasn’t told me anything but I know him almost as well as I know you,” she whispers then smiles wryly. “I am an investigative journalist, you know.”

“An award-winning investigative journalist,” he corrects almost automatically in a quiet tone that matches hers with the proud curve of his lips that always accompanies the phrase.

“Listen, I’m sorry if I pushed too hard,” Rose tells him, brushing a conciliatory hand through his hair, knowing how weak it makes him. “I think this project is doing my head in. I’m going to go my room, have a night in, _sleep_.”

“It’ll win you another award,” he promises, “but that sounds like a good idea for tonight.” Before she turns away completely, he stops her with a hand on his wrist. “Rose, I know you’d never lead me astray, I just… I don’t think that’s what this is.”

“If you’re sure,” she says with a shrug then pauses. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he returns, swiping his thumb in a comforting arc over the back of her palm before letting her hand go.

When he’s alone in the living room, he stares around it and rethinks the conversation that had just passed. Rose hadn’t been lying when she said she knows him — she does, better than anyone on this planet, almost definitely better than his flesh and blood family, and this room is the physical representation of this unbreakable, impermeable thing they’ve built together.

It horrifies all of their parents (well, except Rose’s dad who thinks it’s “a little weird but not criminal”) with how tackily it’s decorated but they both love it. There’s, of course, the collage in the heirloom antique frame on their mantle, alongside a picture of both of them during their time in France. The wall surrounding the fireplace is covered in posters from gigs they’d been to opposite a wall with a giant Pride flag, carried over from their time in the head dorm, which was normal-sized initially but they’d magically resized it as soon as they’d bought it. There’s the dining table with the mismatched chairs from the same flea market as their green velvet sofa, often covered in the Cannons throw, which they’d had to drag the Muggle way from the other end of London since they lived in a mostly Muggle building. Beneath their feet, there’s an array of mismatched carpets overlapping together. In any other context, he too would be horrified — his own bedroom isn’t half so chaotic — but he can feel nothing but sickening fondness for this room because it’s the space he shares with Rose, something they’ve put together bit by bit.

Which is all to say: Rose knows him better than anyone, perhaps even himself, so could she be right? It’s less that he doesn’t want her to be right and more that he doesn’t want to be wrong because it would mean that he’s missed — no, inconceivably, egregiously misinterpreted — this fact about himself, which is uncharacteristic because Scorpius is, well, himself. He’s ruthlessly curious and methodical even when it comes to his own psyche — or maybe especially when it comes to his own psyche — and always, always in his own head. It’s part of why he makes for a pretty good Unspeakable. So being so wrong about himself — it’s not only unthinkable, it’s logically and statistically nearly impossible. So, there.

He takes one last look at the room then gets up to go meet James.

By the time James arrives at the giant party store they’ve agree to meet at, Scorpius has gone into a nearby Muggle bar to down a steadying shot of vodka and paced at the entrance of the store for a solid ten minutes.

“Hey,” James greets him, slightly out of breath. “Have you been waiting long?”

“No,” Scorpius lies. His tone, he notes distantly, is regrettably a little short, a little reminiscent of when they first started planning the party. “Let’s go in.”

Soon, by degrees and increments, Scorpius finds himself unthawing, unable to help his laughter when James struts around, modelling the store’s merchandise, putting on masks, hats, clown shoes, and feather boas, much to the glee of the other patrons. Like the bakery, the staff are utterly unsurprised by James’s action, mildly amused at best.

Two hours later, with only a quarter of that time spent on actually getting the things they came for at most, the only items left are streamers in the primary colours, keeping in theme with everything else they’ve picked out. The only streamers on display are gold and silver so one of the floor staff points them in the direction of the small alcove where they store the streamers they want, amongst other things.

“I think this is where she said they were,” Scorpius calls out to James a few metres away and steps into the alcove. It’s built almost like a closet and roughly the size of his, too, filled to the brim with a colourful cacophony of shiny and glittering things, twinkling like stars in the dimness of the alcove.

James steps in behind him and when Scorpius turns back to face him, they’re so close, they’re almost chest to chest. Scorpius realises for the first time with an acute kind of awareness that he’s a few inches taller than James though he’s always knows that James was broader in the shoulders from years of Quidditch that he’d never taken to, and when he glances downwards, he can see the spread of his eyelashes, inky black, and the faint smattering of freckles on the high points of his cheekbones that he’s never noticed before, the only think marking his smooth brown skin, without even the shadow of stubble that’s perpetually haunting Scorpius. Even more acute is his smell up close — a whiff of the sea probably because of his constant proximity to it, living in Brighton, what must be his cologne, a sweet woodsy scent, and beneath it all, the same burning tinge that comes from being around powerful magic all the time that clings to Scorpius as well.

Scorpius is so, so still that he no longer hears his own breath, nor his heartbeat. James, too, seems as unmoving as him.

After a few moments that drag like rock against asphalt, Scorpius says, “Sorry.” It comes out a _tad_ breathless which isn’t ideal. “Sorry, I should move out of the way. We won’t be able to get anything out of here like this.”

“Yeah,” James agrees and Scorpius is gratified to hear that he sounds a little hoarse and pained.

“Right,” Scorpius says but makes no actual move to get out. He’s starting to think that can’t even if he wanted to and though he’s loath to admit it, he’s not feeling particularly enthused about moving.

He licks his lips, possibly to facilitate another useless remark and involuntarily, he notices the way James’s eyes track the movement. That, more than anything, jolts him and he stumbles back, bumping into the metal shelves that line the alcove and clumsily making his way out, somehow still unable to take his eyes off James until he’s out of sight.

While James presumably gets the streamers, Scorpius’s brain is whirring at hyperspeed, reeling at the encounter. He wants the melted Dali clock in the Time room to slow him down but in its absence, he focuses on the standard white wall clock ticking along on the wall adjacent to him.

 _It’s fine_ , he reasons. _It means nothing. They’re both stressed and they’re sharing that stress and they were in extremely close proximity. It means nothing. It’s fine._

He’s gone through this cycle for what is either the tenth or eleventh time when James emerges from the alcove draped in the streamers. Neither of them say anything as they make their way to the cashier and silently, solemnly pay for everything. Outside, the wind has picked up a little and a shiver flits up his spine.

“Listen,” James starts and Scorpius readies himself for an enormously awkward conversation, possibly fraught with miscommunication. “It’s been really good becoming friends this past month and since this is probably the last time we see each other before the party, I just wanted to apologise since I’ve been meaning to for years.”

“Apologise for what?”

James turns so that only his profile is visible, illuminated starkly by streetlights, the side of his mouth lifted in a half-grin and if Scorpius knows him at all then the other side doesn’t mirror it. “For when you were outed — I know I could’ve said something if I hadn’t been so caught up in my own shit but I didn’t realise until Albus told me about the story and by then it’d died down a little. I thought better let sleeping dogs lie.”

Scorpius feels his heart stuck in his throat, unable to get it unstuck, and despite that, it’s still furiously jackrabbiting in place. “I — I appreciate that but there’s no need to apologise.” He glances downwards and swallows his heart down. “I think I blamed you a little for a long time but it was never your responsibility.”

“But it was my party! I should’ve known, I should’ve shut it down.”

“You could’ve tried, sure, but I think even _you_ couldn’t have controlled a hundred rowdy, drunk teenagers.” Scorpius smiles unevenly at him, unable to believe that he’d blamed him for so long — it was euphoric to feel that taut string inside him dissolve. “You Gryffindors and your saviour complexes.”

James looks down sheepishly, the red of his cheeks clearly visible under the fluorescents, and scuffs the points of his shoe against the pavement. “Yeah, well.”

“Anyway, if we’re doing apologies, I should probably apologise for the assumptions I made about you,” Scorpius says, a little stiffly. “You’ve been generous with me in a way I haven’t been with you.”

“Like you said, they weren’t entirely baseless.”

“Just accept the damn apology,” Scorpius laughs and shoves at his shoulder lightly, then holds out his hand for James to shake. “Fresh start?”

Had it been anyone else, he might’ve gone for a hug. If Rose was right, he would’ve reached up and kissed him. But it’s James and anything other than an outstretched hand feels loaded enough, feels like a gamble he isn’t willing to risk. There’s a part of him that’s certain that any more contact will engulf him flames, open its wide, yawning, cavernous wound of a mouth, and swallow him whole.

James looks at him for a second that feels like it’s crossing light years then reaches up to clasp Scorpius’s hand firmly, both gripping so hard it hurts a little.

Scorpius was wrong. Lessening the points of contact had done nothing to tamp down the flames.

* * *

True to James’s prediction, he doesn’t get to see him until the day of the party. They both have to get up early to set the house up which is kind of unfortunate because Scorpius had stayed up until one in the morning with Rose toasting as per tradition so he and 8 AM are not feeling particularly friendly on this day. He’s so sleep-deprived he manages to forget to be nervous about seeing James after their peculiar last meeting until he’s standing in front of the house minutes before James is due to arrive with the owner, suddenly bursting into such a powerful bout of hives that he almost accidentally Disapparates back to his room.

He hears James before he sees him, the sound of his flip-flops crunching against the gravel path in a rhythm Scorpius now instinctively recognises. The sea air lulls him back to a state of relative stability so that when James calls out his name in greeting, he can raise an acknowledging palm back without any strong emotions bubbling out of him.

James is, predictably, as excitable and giddy as a Golden Retriever puppy. Impressively chatty, too, it seems and Scorpius coughs into his palm to hide his laughter when the owner dismantles some of the protective charms then shoots off, grumbling without sparing either of them a glance. For what it’s worth, James seems completely unbothered by it, turning his megawatt beam of energy squarely onto Scorpius.

“I can’t wait for the party to start,” James says, on the verge of gushing. “It’s going to be great — and amazing weather for it, too!”

It is, the sky a pale teal that stretches for miles without clouds and the sun a luminously white disc in the middle of it. Scorpius smiles languidly at him, relieved to feel the ease that has grown familiar between them. “You realise we have to set it up first?”

“Oh, right.” James takes a small box out of his pocket and unshrinks it. The side of it reads _DECO_ in James’s thin and surprisingly neat block letters.

“Do I want to know what you’ve done with them?”

“Nothing too fancy,” James answers. “No injuries, I promise.”

Scorpius blanches a little, not really reassured by the promise. “Was that a possibility?”

James laughs breezily as if Scorpius had been joking. “It’s always a possibility with Uncle George.” He pauses, tilting his head in contemplation. “Well, usually — not this time. Rose would have my head.”

Right. Rose. Powerful incentive to keep James and his uncle in line and also for the universe to let everything go right. It really does come in handy having a best friend who is capable of terrifying the soul out of any living or non-living thing with enough will.

Everyone’s due to arrive around lunchtime so they spend the rest of the morning setting up chairs and tables and sports equipment as well as shepherding various vendors to the kitchen. Because there’s so much to do and keep track of, they often find themselves on opposite sides of the property, though Scorpius frequently catches glimpses of him (often accompanied by frantic, enthusiastic waves unless he’s focussed on the task at hand, his strong brows furrowed together and just the tip of his pink tongue sticking out between his teeth).

When everyone starts arriving, he no longer gets those glimpses, both of them too busy greeting people and giving them the lay of the land which in this case is quite large. Though he stops one time to scan the crowd and ponder what James had said in their first meeting, _And are there certain people on the guest list that I wouldn’t mind seeing in a state of semi-nudity?_ _Maybe._ He quickly shakes his head with a rush of embarrassment and banishes the thought.

Rose is one of the last to arrive, just after two which he forgives on basis of her being the birthday girl and all. He can see her stand as the edge of the gravel path right where it meets the sand and lets a quiet kind of satisfaction well up in him, staring at her wondrous expression as she takes in everyone loitering around, some with plates, other taking their pick of the activity selection, then when she sees him, she screeches and runs towards him, flinging her arms around his neck.

“You dick, it’s perfect,” she breathes into his shoulder then pulls back to look him in the eye. “I’m getting you to do all my birthdays from now on since I’m a very busy woman.”

“Oh no, absolutely not and anyway, this was all mostly James’s idea so really, if there’s anyone who’s going to be saddled with this task, it should be him.”

Rose stares him down for a few seconds before relenting and smiling sweetly, a divot dimpling her left cheek like it does only when she’s really happy. “Fine,” she says, “but I’m starving and I want to devour my weight in sandwiches.”

“That,” he replies, swinging an arm around her shoulders, “is much more manageable.”

In the end, he doesn’t get to see James again properly until the evening when they go in to the kitchen to fetch the cake. The kitchen is only lit by a single small yellow fixture, swarming the kitchen with large, blurry-edged shadows and making James shadow-like, too. He looks worn down but loose-limbed and mildly sunburnt and happy, much like Scorpius himself looks though he’s likely more lobster-like. Scorpius has just taken the cake out of the freezer and taken off the Stasis Charm, setting it on the island when James stops him with a hand on his forearm. Scorpius doesn’t know if the day has made James’s calluses rougher but the rasp of them against his skin feels so much more pronounced now and it’s making his nerve-endings positively wail though with what emotion he’s not quite sure.

“Hey,” James says, barely above a whisper, “we did really good.”

“We did,” Scorpius agrees. “Thanks to you.”

The side of James’s mouth lifts and his eyes flash golden. “That was almost a compliment, you know.”

Suddenly, Scorpius feels such fondness flare through him that it sparks behind his eyes and he turns away bashfully so James can’t tell. “You wish,” he replies eventually, voice jagged. “Come on, let’s get this cake out before they revolt.”

James dutifully levitates the three-foot-tall cake with him and lights the ten candles on his side of the cake while Scorpius lights his leaving the last one for Rose who does it like she’s crowning a Christmas tree. When everyone is singing to Rose along with him, the loud, buzzing, riotous chant envelops him in a warmth that recalls home, and he looks to Rose to share that feeling with her, finding her a little teary and glowing as if from within. Then for some reason, his gaze drags itself over to James opposite him who, to his surprise, is already looking in his direction.

When their eyes meet over the cake, James's face made unreal by the shadows dancing across it and the light swimming in his eyes, his smile easily the brightest thing in the whole room, Scorpius's stomach drops to the floor and he thinks with deep, vigorous emotion: _oh, no. Oh, fuck no._

* * *

Twenty-one days after her twenty-first birthday, Rose (finally, _finally_ ) submits the first actual draft of her exposé which she still won’t tell Scorpius what it’s about and later that night, giggly and drunk off the heady mix of champagne and the tequila that they followed the champagne with, declares the timing of the occasion “cosmic poetry.” Scorpius, for one, isn’t much inclined to disagree.

Twenty-two days after her twenty-first birthday, Rose decides that this occasion calls for a vocation she had ostensibly quit roughly a year ago: Muggle clubbing. The night she quit, she had somehow managed to spill half a dozen drinks on her favourite dress and not being able to Scourgify it in the club itself, waited until they got home by which time the dress was permanently ruined.

“I’m over it now,” Rose tells him now as he squints at her suspiciously from across their dining table. “Seriously, it’s fine and I’ve got one of those… what do the Muggles call them? Tide sticks? Anyway, I’m keeping my clothing low-risk too.”

“Why the change of heart?”

Rose shrugs, picking lint off her jumper. “I don’t know, really, I just missed it.” She looks at him entreatingly, her head turned towards him in a way that reminds him of the _Girl with a Pearl Earring_. “We used to have fun, remember?”

“That’s true,” he confirms lightly. “Anyone else coming?”

“Just a few people,” she answers and for some reason that is frustratingly unknown to him in retrospect, he doesn’t think to question it. “Are you in?”

This is, he recalls, a celebration for the months of tireless work she’s put into her project and if she wants to mark the occasion with Muggle clubbing then, well, who is he to refuse? “Wouldn’t miss it,” he says.

Two hours later, deep in the trenches of some sleek, futuristic club, Scorpius discovers the true reason — or perhaps more accurately, the primary reason because Rose rarely uses actions to fulfil a single mean — Rose was strangely insistent on his accompanying her. Said reason is wearing a white shirt open at the collar with the sleeves rolled up, giving Scorpius minor heart palpitations. Said reason is also known as James Sirius Potter. It was so much easier to ignore the fact that he’s unfairly attractive when Scorpius was in denial that unhealthily approximated delusion.

He whirls dramatically to face Rose who has a frighteningly iron grip on his elbow and accuses her through gritted teeth, “You snake. You picked a Muggle club so I can’t Disapparate now and pack my things from the flat.”

“You wouldn’t,” she says, completely nonplussed. “Stop avoiding him. He doesn’t know what he’s done — or rather what he hasn’t done — and he’s been like a kicked puppy for the past two weeks. No one in the family can really bear it.”

Scorpius falters at this. After his epiphany of epic proportions at Rose’s birthday, he’d shot a panicked look at her then stuck close to his parents, leaving without telling James goodbye. His replies to James’s owls have been bare and perfunctory at best. He’s been going to work half an hour early to avoid a lift encounter and avoiding the break room like the plague. The previous week, James had happened upon him there when he’d only been in the break room for five minutes and Scorpius had to wandlessly and with considerable effort cool his coffee so he could pretend to have been there for ages then flee with feeble promises to catch up soon. It was true that James’s expressions of both delight at seeing him and disappointment at his premature departure had seemed more animated than usual but Scorpius had simply chalked it up to having forgotten how vivid and intense being around James is. Maybe he was wrong again.

“Just — go talk to him,” Rose nudges him, more gently now. “You might be surprised, and hey, I’m still here if it goes badly.”

Scorpius breathes in the thick scent of alcohol and sweat and frenzied hormones, and lets it bolster his bravado, squaring his shoulders and walking towards James. Of course, five minutes later, Rose shamelessly abandons him in favour of flirting with Wisteria who seems to be responding with alarming forwardness. At least one of them is getting lucky then.

James spots him and starts making his way to Scorpius at a pace that sends his heart into overdrive again. “Scorpius,” he yells at a volume that is loud even for a club. “It’s good to see you.”

“It’s good to see you, too,” he replies truthfully. Seeing him appears to be dangerous for his health but other than that, it’s uniquely intoxicating even if he isn’t close enough to catch all his favourite parts of James that have been sending pangs of withdrawal through him for the past three weeks.

“Gin and tonic, right?” James only waits for the shallowest of nods from Scorpius before bounding off to the bar which — Scorpius shouldn’t be disappointed at the brevity of their greeting. If it really is what the rest of the evening is going to be like, he’s played his part plenty in writing this script. It’s what he’d aimed for technically.

James returns a few minutes later, a thin line of moisture beading at his forehead with two glasses in hand. “It’s a good thing there wasn’t a queue,” he says, handing Scorpius his drink.

“It is a Wednesday,” Scorpius remarks helpfully. “What brings you out on a Wednesday anyway?”

“Rose invited me,” he answers readily then, with a slow, deliberate look that raises the hairs on back of Scorpius’s neck, adds, “and she said you’d be here.”

Scorpius blinks once, then twice. “Oh,” he says, struck faintly dumb.

“Yeah,” James agrees with a chuckle. He pauses briefly, a conflicted expression emerging in the furrow of his brows and the bitter twist of his lips. “I — it’s been too long.”

They manage to talk their way through two more rounds of drinks while James regales him of stories of accidentally jinxing his co-worker into talking in rhyming couplets for a week straight and then spending three days speaking in Haikus, and the storm of owls he’s been getting from his sister about her pre-graduation crisis. In turn, Scorpius tells him of having to spell Rose’s energy drink reserves into water and her being so far gone that she hadn’t even noticed. He tells him about the weekend he spent with his grandmother in the South of France and how much it reminded him of James, how the sound of every wave seemed to be echoing his name, and he almost tells him that he’s missed him but he doesn’t because that would make the precarious game of Jenga he’s been playing fall apart — this night is a risky move but he still plans on winning which is to say that he’s getting his fill of James before he has to go back to dodging him at every turn until the disaster that is his _feelings_ are quashed into nothing.

He notes with a disembodied kind of awareness that the tipsier he get, the more he’s leaning towards James, until their heads are bent together, conspiratorial like a pair of thieves and so close he can see the club’s lights reflect in his eyes and catch on the shine of his hair. His eyes keep flitting back to the strength rippling beneath the skin of James’s forearm which makes no sense to Scorpius because he used to regularly see him in short-sleeved shirts and cope perfectly fine. Which is to say that is he not coping very well at this moment. He thinks James has been leaning in too but he doesn’t trust himself to not be making it up but either way, James doesn’t object to the closeness.

Scorpius is abruptly wrenched away from this conjectured intimacy when he gets a lapful of Rose, who is evidently much drunker than he is. “Scoooorpius,” she wails sloppily, pouting at him, “come dance with me. Wisty won’t dance with me.”

“That’s definitely _Wisty’s_ loss,” he consoles her, “but in case you’ve forgotten we’re both very gay so I don’t think she’ll be very jealous.”

“No, no, no, it’s the — the principle of it,” she says, banging a fist on the bartop. “Like the sharing time and the — the _intimacy_ of dancing.”

“She does make a decent point,” James interjects with a grin that’s somewhere between amused and something else with a little more flint to it. “Even if it’s not that coherent.”

Scorpius sighs, faux-indulgent, and gets up, propping up Rose a little. “Well, lucky for you, seems I’ve been outvoted so dancing it is.”

There’s an astonishing amount of strength in Rose’s hand for someone who’d just needed to be physically supported as she drags him to the dancefloor not too far from where they’d been sitting. It’s not sparse enough to make Scorpius self-conscious but as James had pointed out earlier, there aren’t too many people here tonight, even less now an hour after the fact. Despite being a sloppy drunk, Rose is a good dance partner but that may just be the tipsiness and sentimentality talking, Scorpius will happily admit. It’s a song he’s never heard before but the beat rings through his body like it recognises it. Rose’s arms are tight around his neck and they’re both stepping on each other’s feet a little but he feels relaxed in a way that he hasn’t felt in weeks — this night might’ve been a trap but it’s not all bad. When they let go of each other a little between songs, Wisteria comes up behind Rose, bringing her arms around her waist and letting the dark curtain of her hair drape over her face as she presses her lips to Rose’s neck.

“Scorpius,” she acknowledge him with a nod that he returns then says to Rose, “Looks like time to come and fetch you.”

“It worked then?” Rose asks, remarkably less slurred.

The gears grind to a halt in Scorpius’s head then creak back into laboriously processing their words. “What worked? What are you up to?”

Wisteria grimaces with a measure of sympathy and tilts her chin to point somewhere to his right. When he turns to look, James is making his way over, his walk something of a prowl and all the ease he had shatters like a plate thrown to the floor. The idea of James and dancing and any kind of physical nearness that isn’t limited to like, elbows and shoulders and knees blocks every other mental process in his brain. While Scorpius is short-circuiting, Wisteria and Rose slink back to the bar, gone by the time James gets there.

“I missed you at the bar,” James says with that half-grin that he’d so dearly missed. “Got bored without you — but watching you was a little fun. I don’t think I’ve seen you dance since Rose’s twentieth.”

In the face of Scorpius’s slightly-panicked silence, James touches his forearm, swiping his thumb in a hypnotic arc, then removes his hand, making as though to lean in slowly, keeping his lava-liquid eyes on Scorpius’s the whole time and Scorpius — well — it’s important to understand that he’d come to terms with some very specific facts and assumptions and he’d planned accordingly. This entire night was not part of that plan. Whatever James is planning to do is _definitely_ not part of that plan and Scorpius is tipsy and out of his element and —

The tug of Disapparition pulls on his navel without him even realising that he’d been calling for it and a supremely uncomfortable second later, he’s in his living room and his discomfort has rapidly expanded into full-blown meltdown. He broke the Statute of Secrecy — he _broke the Statute of Secrecy_ and it’s very possible that he’s fucked everything up with James.

After a few minutes of pacing around his living room and tugging at his hair, a series of loud bangs comes from the door. Scorpius freezes mid-step and stares with wide eyes at the door wondering who it is. An MLE official? The Aurors?

“Scorpius, I know you’re in there,” James hollers but the sprawling anger in his tone makes Scorpius tense even more. “I can take a hint, fine, but Disapparating from the middle of a Muggle club? When you’ve been drinking?”

Scorpius walks the short distance to the door with incomparable dread weighing down every muscle. When he opens the door, James is — glorious, there’s no other word for it. He’s angry, to be sure, his body compacted by an inextricable knot of something jagged and red-hot, but to Scorpius, it feels unthreatening, almost protective. He’s repressing the desire to reach out not cowering behind his door. There’s a vein jumping up in his jaw that Scorpius wants to bite down on which seems kind of hysterical given the situation.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, keeping his eyes firmly on his feet. He succumbs to the urge to glance back at James only a second later, drawn like a magnet.

James deflates, his eyes tightening with disappointment. “I don’t get it like I can take no for an answer. You could’ve pulled away or said no or — or anything other than Disapparating like that.” There’s a layer of mourning in his scrutiny. “I was expecting it, really.”

“ _What_ ,” Scorpius says, hoping that either his tone or his face conveys his immense bewilderment.

“I was going to kiss you,” James says, incensed. “You knew I was going to kiss you and you literally fucking _disappeared_ instead of rejecting me like a —“

“That, there,” Scorpius interrupts in breathy disbelief. “Why on earth do you think _I_ would reject _you_?”

“Do you remember breaking the Statute of Secrecy to get away from me?”

“Okay, I get it, alright, I’m sorry.” He raises his hands in placation. “I panicked, like stupid-panic, like how-are-you-still-alive panic.”

“Sounds about right,” James replies gruffly, slowly uncrossing his arms.

“I can’t believe you thought I was rejecting you when I’ve been all over you all night,” Scorpius says sheepishly. “Possibly before that as well.”

“You’re really hard to read, you know that?” James counters. “Yeah, sometimes it seems like you might like me but then suddenly you go a bit cold all over. You hating me before skews the scale a little, too.” He gives Scorpius a baleful look, boring into him. “Not to mention, you did avoid me for three weeks just when I thought we were getting somewhere.”

“Panicking might be a theme with me when it comes to you?” Scorpius says without any confidence. “I, uh, realised I fancied you at Rose’s birthday and might have… reacted badly.”

“You are such pain to like,” James breathes out. “I can’t believe I’ve liked you for _years_.”

“What?” Scorpius exclaims in a squeak he would like to erase from his and James’s memory immediately.

“Not continuously, mind you,” James adds with a laugh, “but yeah.”

Scorpius blinks owlishly as he rethinks literally every interaction he’s had with James over the past few years — it’s genuinely painful to think of how badly he’s blundered through things and how lucky he is that James is still standing here instead of storming of with someone less obtuse. He might have to renew his apology for making assumptions. For now, though — “James, can you please step inside?” he asks as tonelessly as possible.

James starts to comply then pauses, eyeing Scorpius suspiciously. “Why?”

“I’d like to kiss you in a place that isn’t our very public doorway, preferably in proximity to the couch. Also maybe my bedroom.”

Scorpius almost gets whiplash from how fast James lights up like a firework show and moves inside, staring at the living room like it’s his first time visiting. Scorpius closes the door behind himself without taking his eyes off James, studying his sloping jaw and giddy grin, the sturdy, solid line of his shoulders and what he can make of his collarbones from his open shirt, and his hands, his deft, callused fingers. He thinks he might have enough things to study until the sun stops rising and even after then.

At the click of the door, James turns to him, radiant and beautiful and just a little apprehensive. Scorpius tries to burn into his mind this picture of James in this room before the both make so that there’s no taking it back.

“So…” James starts to say and Scorpius — Scorpius shamelessly, gracelessly, unflinchingly jumps him, digging his fingers into jaw. James catches him with unexpected agility and sets him on the arm of the sofa, melding his mouth to Scorpius’s and it’s like he’s been set on fire. James’s mouth is soft in ways he never expected it to be; it’s a flame burning so hot it feels good. It’s messy and frantic and his stubble is scratching against James’s face in a way that’s making every nerve-ending in his body light up. Scorpius feels so greedy, like he’s swimming in a pool of gold, clutching at everything he can reach, becoming acquainted with jutting bones of James’s shoulder blades as James strokes up the back of his thigh and down the curve of his side.

Stifling a groan, James bites down on his lower lip, turning the kisses slow and syrupy before resting his forehead against Scorpius’s, their breaths heavy and ridiculously out of sync. “I think I might spontaneously combust,” James mumbles in the hollow of his mouth.

“We can pause, if you want,” he chuckles, pulling back to admire James’s bee-stung lips and reddening jaw, helpless to the beaming smile stretching his lips. “I am so glad I was wrong about you.”

There’s an impulsive peck to the corner of his mouth, accompanied by a teasing smile. “Being able to admit that you’re wrong is definitely attractive,” James says, attempting to be serious but failing miserably.

“Speaking of being attractive,” Scorpius starts, “years, you say?”

James splutters with embarrassment then mellows at the gently curious look on Scorpius’s face. “Yeah,” he answers eventually. “You always seemed kind of… aloof but not in a bad way just that — you had this kind of surety about what you wanted and you weren’t willing to compromise it or, or dilute your purpose. You care a lot about everything and everyone in your life in such a profound way and it shows. With your —“ He gesture vaguely at Scorpius’s whole being “— you came off like a, a benevolent avenging angel and at first, I mostly wanted to live in that shadow, I guess, but now… now, I just really like you.”

He’s so open and earnest-looking, it melts Scorpius down until he’s just mostly a sentient bucket of affection. “I really like you too,” he whispers. “I like you’re not really like me, that you’re unreserved and generous and somehow still intensely thoughtful and how you bring me out of my head. It also helps that you’re the hottest thing I’ve ever seen after that one time I accidentally made Time explode a little.”

“Now, _that_ is fully a compliment,” James replies, smile somehow even more blinding. “Multiple compliments even.”

“You wish,” Scorpius laughs, leaning in to kiss him with a nebulous, unbridled kind of slovenly enthusiasm.

Scorpius eases himself of the sofa, tugging at the hand settled at the top of his hip. “Come on,” he says. “We have at least a few hours before Rose begins her gloating campaign and I, for one, plan on putting them to _very_ good use.”

**Author's Note:**

> the line between trying to make scorpius's horniness come thru and portraying him as the oblivious idiot that he is is like one of those flimsy cotton threads sitcking out of an old tshirt that your mum picks off for you. also, in this universe, harry was a c*p for like three months before he unequivocally declared "fuck this shit" and went into the war rehabilitation efforts then became an attorney and takes on pro-bono cases mostly which is why james never considered being an auror. and yes, in this universe, pansy and lavender got married and their daughter is the youngest editor in the prophet, completely revolutionising the lifestyle section. yes, i have thoughts. lots of them. to hear more of my thoughts pls come along @ honeyhusk on tumblr!


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